The invention generally relates to automatic food process lines and, more particularly, to a food-product loader for the food process lines that dispenses a unit of a food product on the process line from the bottom of a bulk hopper.
It is an object of the invention to eliminate 50-100% of the labor in loading chicken tenders on a conveyor belt in a food process line (and like food products which are typically manually loaded), and reduce the footprint of such loading station by 50% or better too. Comparable food products include without limitation fish fillets.
By way of background, reference to a chicken “tender” can mean one of two things. The term “tender” can refer specifically to the “tenderloin” of a chicken. Or it can refer to imitations, namely, strips of breast meat (other than the tenderloin) cut to size and shape to simulate the true tenderloin. Regardless, both are boneless and skinless strips of chicken meat that have a shape, limpness and squishiness which makes them hard to handle by certain machines.
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) defines a poultry “tenderloin” as “the inner pectoral muscle which lies alongside the sternum.” In other words, the tenderloin is the strip of muscle that runs along the inside of the breast, the part of the breast closest to the bone. The tenderloin separates easily from the rest of the breast.
However, the USDA definition is not officially enforced. In fact, neither “chicken tender” nor “chicken tenderloin” are officially enforced terms. So there is much confusion. The USDA has a policy which concludes as follows. “The terms tender and tenderloin have been used for a number of years for muscles from the breast without a clear-cut definition to distinguish between the two. The policy stated above appears to be what is being done in general practice.”
The true tenderloin is a choice piece of meat but, when first removed from the breast and bone, it does have a tendon running through it. The tendon is basically gristle that has to be removed and then discarded.
A butcher shop might sell off chicken tenderloins fairly cheaply, just to get rid of them, and so it doesn't have fiddle with the tedious work of removing the tendon. In other contexts, the true “tenderloin” sells for a premium over the other part of the breast meat. And this is so in industries operating large-scale food processing lines. It pays to retrieve the true tenderloin because, the true tenderloin can be sold for quite an expensive premium.
Nevertheless, true “tenderloin” tenders and imitation tenders are about the same when it comes to loading them on a wide conveyor belt. To date, there has been no highly satisfactory mechanized way to transfer tenders from a bulk hopper to a wide conveyor belt in a neat orderly fashion (nor for fish fillets either). It is desired to load the tenders in a distributed fashion such that individual tenders are all slightly spaced apart from one another. And, true tenders have a smooth side. It is furthermore desired that the smooth side is up.
The challenges to loading tenders from a bulk hopper result from several factors. For one, chicken tenders have a distinct shape (or form). They are long and thin, hence the other common name “fingers.” But they do have something like an elongated tear-drop shape. In the industry, the rounder of the two ends is referred to as the head as the tapered end is referred to as the tail (albeit, these names have nothing to do with the real head and tail of the live bird).
Another factor is the limpness or squishiness of the raw tenders. They have no bones nor any skin, and hence no tissue which gives the tenders any internal rigidity. Any attempts to stand a tender on its head or tail merely results in a collapsed over pile. In a bulk hopper, the tenders just sort of intertwine with one another in a mass like cooked macaroni.
A further factor relates to the slipperiness of raw tenders. True tenders have a smooth side and slightly rougher side. It may be due to these two different textures that, while overall a tender feels slippery like a banana peel, a mass of tenders will kind of adhere to one another.
Given the foregoing, to date there has been no highly satisfactory mechanized way to transfer tenders from a bulk hopper to a wide conveyor belt in a neat orderly fashion. Especially where it is desired to load the tenders in a distributed fashion such that individual tenders are all slightly spaced apart from one another, and smooth side is up.
So nowadays the standard practice is to have the tenders manually loaded. This requires room for a team of about a dozen people to stand aside the conveyor, six on each side. The tenders only travel down the line for as long as the team works. In other words, the chicken tenders take breaks along with the team of workers when they take their worker breaks.
It is an object of the invention to overcome the shortcomings of the prior art.
A number of additional features and objects will be apparent in connection with the following discussion of preferred embodiments and examples.